The green parrots in this book are antipersonnel mines dropped by the thousands from helicopters into war zones: "ten centimeters altogether, two wings with a small cylinder at the center. More like a butterfly than a parrot." They vanish into grass and rubble. Step on one by accident, touch it, and you are torn apart, maimed, or dead. Mostly it happens to children. Strada writes: "In more than ten years of operating on the victims of these mines, I have never once treated an adult. Not one. Every patient was a child."
In 1999 the International Viareggio Prize was awarded to Gino Strada. The award also honored EMERGENCY, the apolitical humanitarian organization he founded in 1994 to aid civilians caught in war. Two years earlier, EMERGENCY had helped push Italy toward a ban on antipersonnel mine production. This year that ban took effect globally. Sixty-four countries signed on—though notably absent are the United States, Russia, and China.
Strada is a surgeon at the front lines. When others flee, he arrives with colleagues, nurses, and staff. He builds field hospitals, operates day and night, establishes rehabilitation centers for war and mine victims, helps disabled children return to life.
This wrenching book collects his field notes from crisis zones: brief accounts of events, situations, people; raw memories, deep feeling. His lived experience—messages for those of us in a world opposite to his—reaches us in simple, direct language. It expands our understanding, forces us to think. His aim: "to strengthen the conviction in those who read these pages that all wars, every war, is a horror. And that we cannot turn away to avoid the faces of those who suffer in silence."
— Editors, 2000